Ishrat encounter case: CBI to grill Gujarat minister Pradeepsinh Jadeja

Ahmedabad: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday grilled Gujarat Minister of State for Law Pradeepsinh Jadeja in connection with the 2004 Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case. The CBI had also sent a notice to state Advocate General Kamal Trivedi and former minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, asking them to appear before it, reports said. Jadeja was questioned in Gandhinagar about an alleged meeting held in November 2011 to decide the strategy “to obstruct the investigation” of the fake encounters of Ishrat Jahan and three others, sources said. 

Suspended IPS officer G L Singhal, who was among the nine persons, who attended the meeting, had submitted two pen drives to investigators containing the recorded conversation of the meeting. 
Singhal is now out on bail, as the agency failed to file the charge sheet against him in the stipulated 90 days. The nine people who were present in the meeting held in private chamber of Advocate General Trivedi were G L Singhal, Singhal’s lawyer friend Rohit Verma, G C Murmu, A K Sharma, then MoS (home) Praful Patel, Jadeja, then former minister and now agriculture minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama and another accused in Ishrat case, Tarun Barot. Last week, CBI grilled Murmu, secretary to Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and Crime Branch Joint Commissioner A K Sharma. 

The agency also grilled suspended IPS officer D G Vanzara last week regarding his resignation letter in which he had hit out at Modi government for failing to protect the jailed police officers with regard to fake encounter cases.CBI has named Singhal, Vanzara, suspended IPS officers P P Pandey and Tarun Barot, N K Amin, retired DSP J G Parmar and commando Anaju Chaudhary in the charge sheet, accusing them of murder and criminal conspiracy with regard to the encounter killing of 19-year-old Ishrat, Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana on the outskirts of Ahmedabad in June 2004. CBI’s probe in the case was still on, it had said when filing the charge sheet in July 2013. 

Bureau Report